Speaker 1: What second? My part of this episode on right wing
Speaker 1: attempts to attack and dominate school board meetings in order
Speaker 1: to further their ability to do violence on marginalized groups
Speaker 1: and also erode democratic institutions from the ground. Uh. Stage title, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that'll that'll click. Well Ah, I'm solutely glad. We don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about clicking and titles. And that took
Speaker 1: up a lot of my mind back in the day, Garrison,
Speaker 1: back when, back when the internet was different. Now we
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about that anymore. But we do
Speaker 1: have to worry about our mobs of fascists attacking school
Speaker 1: board meetings. It happens every week, keeps happening more often.
Speaker 1: School boards are calling for assistance. That they seem pretty,
Speaker 1: they seem pretty not thrilled. Yeah, they seem not psyched
Speaker 1: about that. So we're we're we're. When we left off,
Speaker 1: I was talking about some things I found on the
Speaker 1: gram Telegram. Uh, Garrison, what's next. I'll go into my
Speaker 1: preliminary research on Telegram and particularly response. Basically, I looked
Speaker 1: through every single Telegram post and all of the main
Speaker 1: fascist channels I lurk on that mentioned school boards from
Speaker 1: like the past two weeks. Um, So like yeah, this
Speaker 1: is like current current stuff on ongoing. Um. I got
Speaker 1: to a lot of the channels I was already familiar with,
Speaker 1: like you know, the Western Shapnist channel, which is uh
Speaker 1: subs um, the Standard Students channel, which was a when
Speaker 1: I was less familiar with, specifically dedicated to this school
Speaker 1: board issue. Um. One of one of the posts I
Speaker 1: we have on there is h says your enemy isn't
Speaker 1: some far off ship whole country. Your enemy is just
Speaker 1: down the street at your local school board meeting, teaching
Speaker 1: your kids to hate their ancestors, you and themselves. So
Speaker 1: like again, that is a very much white supremacist dog
Speaker 1: whistle just right there, um talking about producing Hollywood movies
Speaker 1: writing they're not whistle basically, it's basically just a whistle. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah. They then they, you know, the same post
Speaker 1: talks about you know, masks and shuting down businesses and
Speaker 1: the vaccines and stuff and saying the fight is here
Speaker 1: and the fight is now. So just in terms of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're really wanting to hype people up for doing this
Speaker 1: thing at school boards. They're trying to really hammer down
Speaker 1: the school board points. So like I found this. I
Speaker 1: found this post. This is This is a post from
Speaker 1: the Standford Students channel um and I saw this one
Speaker 1: re shared in a lot of different channels. One of
Speaker 1: the other first ones that I saw pop off was
Speaker 1: from Ron watkins channel like Code monkey z. He is
Speaker 1: one of the one of the architects or one of
Speaker 1: the you know people who really pushed Q and on
Speaker 1: stuff into He's the guy who ran like the physical
Speaker 1: infrastructure of a chan and eight coon for years. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He and he's trying to pivot into being like having
Speaker 1: his just his face be like a kind of alternative
Speaker 1: right wing figure right now. Uh, he's gonna be running
Speaker 1: for office in Arizona, I believe. Anyway, he has a
Speaker 1: very popular telegram channel, um and he he made he
Speaker 1: made this post that had over a thousand, over a
Speaker 1: thousand comments on it, which is a lot for telegram.
Speaker 1: A thousand comments on telegram post, especially telegram post of
Speaker 1: of code mackezs size. I't see how many subs does it?
Speaker 1: So Ron, just for his context, Ron Watkins has four
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty two thousand subscribers on his on his
Speaker 1: Telegram channel. So yep. Anyway, Uh, CRT is being rebranded
Speaker 1: as s e L a social emotional learning. If you
Speaker 1: are attending school board meetings as you should be, do
Speaker 1: what you can to make sure you stop both s
Speaker 1: e L and CRT and keep them and make sure
Speaker 1: that they are banned in your school districts. So again,
Speaker 1: just direct calls to action for getting people to show
Speaker 1: up to these school boards. And also, social emotional learning
Speaker 1: is not CRT, and of course T is not even
Speaker 1: taught in schools. I think everyone who listens to this
Speaker 1: podcast knows that SRT, actually critical theory isn't taught in schools.
Speaker 1: This isn't an actual thing. It's it is like a
Speaker 1: legal theory. We'll get into more of how this gout,
Speaker 1: like pushed towards the end. I think Chris has some
Speaker 1: stuff prepared on that. Yeah we yeah, yeah, it's again
Speaker 1: these none of these things are actually real. It's a
Speaker 1: complex legal theory. What they're really mad about is their
Speaker 1: people are teaching that racism is like an issue that's
Speaker 1: built into a lot of American institutions and it's an
Speaker 1: ongoing thing. It's not a thing of the past. That's
Speaker 1: what they're actually mad about, and they just call that CRT.
Speaker 1: Some some of the comments from the Ron Watkins post,
Speaker 1: stuff like these snowflakes are so annoying. I'm about to
Speaker 1: start cutting power to any school in my community that
Speaker 1: teaches this. Um so yeah, more Again, that's just a direct,
Speaker 1: direct threat of doing terrorism. Should I mean less of
Speaker 1: a threat and more of a promise? Yeah? Do that
Speaker 1: it be? No? Sure it doesn't. All right, Well I
Speaker 1: don't understand things the same way you zoomers do. Please continue. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of posts being a shipped
Speaker 1: around from channel to channel, including this full Nazi channels
Speaker 1: were like trying to trying to of course, like a
Speaker 1: lots of Nazis are actually you know, I thought it
Speaker 1: was pretty funny that the that the school board union
Speaker 1: put in a call to assistance to the federal government
Speaker 1: to deal with this issue. They of course they thought
Speaker 1: that was funny. But they're gonna use this to like
Speaker 1: spread networks to be like, hey, the government wants to
Speaker 1: stop you. They're calling you a terrorist. You like regular
Speaker 1: folk are being called terrorists because you're showing up with
Speaker 1: school boards, right, That's the kind of message that they're
Speaker 1: going to shoot out. So they a lot of Nazi
Speaker 1: channels crafted a lot of posts like that that got
Speaker 1: shared around a lot. Yeah, in trying to basically all
Speaker 1: time critical race theory and if you approached against critical
Speaker 1: race theory, they're calling you a domestic terrorist. That that
Speaker 1: type of thing. And this got this got shared in
Speaker 1: the school boards channel and a whole bunch of whole
Speaker 1: bunch of other stuff being being talking about how if you,
Speaker 1: if you stand up, you're gonna be a domestic terrorist.
Speaker 1: You have to be brave and do this. A few
Speaker 1: days after the school board uh, not a few days,
Speaker 1: I guess this. This this was in like in October
Speaker 1: um the school Association retracted some of the some of
Speaker 1: the words that they used in their letter because of
Speaker 1: this BackFlash that was created. And this was also shared
Speaker 1: in shared in uh lots of fascist channels. The main
Speaker 1: one who was shared in that I saw was the
Speaker 1: Honk Pilled channel UM, which is just another type of
Speaker 1: peppe meme um uh, one of the other one of
Speaker 1: the other big, big kind of groups active in this
Speaker 1: in this whole sphere. And this this has been a
Speaker 1: group going on for a while and we haven't talked
Speaker 1: about on the pod, but we probably should do something eventually.
Speaker 1: Is this group called White Rose so this is a
Speaker 1: White Rose is a COVID conspiracy group that has been
Speaker 1: very uh successful in creating on the ground organizers who
Speaker 1: are regular people, and they do a lot of like
Speaker 1: sticker bombs and lots of neighborhoods. If you have if
Speaker 1: you ever seen anti like COVID or COVID conspiracy stickers
Speaker 1: in your neighborhood, it was probably a White Rose sticker. UM.
Speaker 1: These are all over the States and basically every university.
Speaker 1: As a quick heads up, the original White Rose was
Speaker 1: a student protest organization that existed in Nazi Germany UM
Speaker 1: and protested illegally, and its organizers were executed by the Nazis.
Speaker 1: And I think it was the mid forty I mean
Speaker 1: it would be like like forty three, maybe maybe forty four. UM.
Speaker 1: Sophie Shoal was the person most associated with them. So
Speaker 1: they they're they're they've taken the names of these these heroes,
Speaker 1: UM in order to it's just disgusting, it's very gross.
Speaker 1: There's there's a decent amount of decent amount of researchers
Speaker 1: in this field thinks that there's like actual bad people
Speaker 1: behind White Rose. Of course, with like bad people because
Speaker 1: they're spending COVID stuff, but like like wait, like like
Speaker 1: more like bad actors use basically astroturfing this thing, but
Speaker 1: White rosters its own piece later. But because they have
Speaker 1: such a big following on telegram, they are of course
Speaker 1: using using this to using the school board thing to
Speaker 1: gain more support they have about subscribers to their specific
Speaker 1: telegram channel. They shared a post a few weeks ago
Speaker 1: saying thank you to all the brave parents going out
Speaker 1: to their school boards and standing up for the children. Um.
Speaker 1: And they try that, you know, get people to do
Speaker 1: sticker bombs and stuff, but the fact that there's like
Speaker 1: specifically calling out people in school boards is like an
Speaker 1: extra step of like beyond just putting stickers up in
Speaker 1: your neighborhood. Um. Another another another white right Rose post.
Speaker 1: They shared a shared a video UM that was captioned
Speaker 1: as concerned parent absolutely destroys school board with facts. The
Speaker 1: school boards are the battlefield of our time. This is
Speaker 1: how it's done, and just the increasing rhetoric around like
Speaker 1: battle fields, this is where like the fight is at
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. Um. There was another another uh,
Speaker 1: the white White Chauvinist channel shared a video from Fox
Speaker 1: News UM and they they the Western Chauvinist channel, which
Speaker 1: is again it's one of the most shared ones in
Speaker 1: this whole network. They captioned this saying, parents and virgin
Speaker 1: here are trying to fight back against the school board
Speaker 1: that is anti white. Um, every every school district in
Speaker 1: America needs to have an anti mandate pro right parents
Speaker 1: running for the school board. So that's just the It's
Speaker 1: this type of stuff all over and this this this
Speaker 1: post was got it has like an eleven eleven thousand,
Speaker 1: eleven thousand views. Um, So these things are spreading to
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of these specific networks. And
Speaker 1: I mean, I I have so many of this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. I'm not going to go through every single
Speaker 1: one in detail. There's ones that are way more like
Speaker 1: openly anti Semitic, uh, you know, saying, you know the
Speaker 1: Jews that run you know, ex school board, um are
Speaker 1: trying to force vaccinations on every student over twelve. Um.
Speaker 1: Other another Uh, there's this fake this is this this
Speaker 1: fake Clint Eastwood channel on Telegram that's pretty popular. Someone
Speaker 1: who's pretending to be Clint Eastwood that spread far right stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: He had a post that was shared a lot that
Speaker 1: started by saying starts taking over school boards, start taking
Speaker 1: over city council, start to ing over city boards. Um,
Speaker 1: start to start being pull watchers, start being poll workers,
Speaker 1: start taking over sheriff's departments. It's not enough just to vote.
Speaker 1: So this, this is the other thing that we're going
Speaker 1: to see a lot more of, is rhetoric around voting.
Speaker 1: Isn't enough. You need to start doing more things. Um,
Speaker 1: there is one of it. Yeah, here, here's here's one.
Speaker 1: This is gonna this is a referencing some of the
Speaker 1: trans stuff. I'll discussing a bit, but I just want
Speaker 1: to tie it in now. A post from the Western
Speaker 1: Chauvinist Channel saying there is no political solution, which is
Speaker 1: a direct Nazi, a direct Nazi lie. I mean that.
Speaker 1: That's what I did an article early this year on
Speaker 1: Riley Williams, the Nazi who stole Pelosi's laptop during the
Speaker 1: Capitol riot, and then like the video that we were
Speaker 1: able to identify her as a sig hiling Nazi, and
Speaker 1: that's how she opened her quote, there is no political solution.
Speaker 1: It's a very common catchphrase among like the the fast right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's been a lot of stuff around harassing, like
Speaker 1: specific school board members harassing specific teacher. Was there was
Speaker 1: this teacher in uh, I think in California that was
Speaker 1: trying to like introduced like like anti fascist type rhetoric
Speaker 1: and talking about how fascism is a modern thing. They
Speaker 1: got absolutely bashed um and like docs um, and they
Speaker 1: got it I think fired because there was like hundreds
Speaker 1: of parents organizing on on apps like telegram to harass
Speaker 1: this one teacher at school board's like you know, they
Speaker 1: took over massive school board meetings and just talked about
Speaker 1: this one teacher endlessly. Um. And it was even It's
Speaker 1: interesting because like all the parents were like, yeah, Mike,
Speaker 1: my I got worried because my student actually really like
Speaker 1: liked the teacher and said that they were doing like
Speaker 1: giving really interesting points about like systemic issues. And the
Speaker 1: parents were like and they brought their kids to the
Speaker 1: school board meeting. There's the kids are just standing in
Speaker 1: the back as their parents are ranting about this and
Speaker 1: talking about how the kids actually, like I thought, they
Speaker 1: were learning things about systemic issues. And then that got
Speaker 1: people mad. So you know what else gets people mad? Uh?
Speaker 1: This is advertisements. H And we're bad. We're gonna we're
Speaker 1: gonna touch on the uh the specifics like all the
Speaker 1: stuff we've been talking about. Most of the modern most
Speaker 1: most of the current organizing is a lot of it's
Speaker 1: around like mask mandates and vaccine mandates. Um, Like all
Speaker 1: of this called like you know this the stool board channel.
Speaker 1: All of this kind of stuff is usually around vaccine,
Speaker 1: vaccines and mask stuff. Uh, of course there's critic Royce
Speaker 1: theory was the way more popular thing a few months ago.
Speaker 1: Right now is the vaccine thing. The other kind of
Speaker 1: like ever present thing is being upset that trans kids
Speaker 1: exist and being very fearful that that there are trans
Speaker 1: kids around your kids. Uh. This is a thing that's been,
Speaker 1: you know, a thing for years that people have been
Speaker 1: fighting against. And since the school board things becoming more popular,
Speaker 1: people are are starting to, uh bring vasically do these
Speaker 1: kind of flash mobs specifically around trans issues. Um. One
Speaker 1: of like the more like astro turf type things was
Speaker 1: people getting mad that there were like two specific books
Speaker 1: available in certain high school and some middle school libraries.
Speaker 1: Um that one of it was like a like one
Speaker 1: of it was the memoir that Robert mentioned. The other
Speaker 1: one was like a graphic novel memorial about someone realizing
Speaker 1: their gender queer. So these are books that are not
Speaker 1: in curriculums. These are just books that are available at
Speaker 1: the library. Um. And basically there was people who just
Speaker 1: who found these out and got turned it into like
Speaker 1: like a meme on telegram essentially, like people like sharing
Speaker 1: information about this. Then you like look it up, see
Speaker 1: if it's in your library. So then we have all
Speaker 1: of these like coordinated attacks on school boards by these
Speaker 1: mobs of people all about these same two books. Um.
Speaker 1: And the goals to not only just get the books
Speaker 1: like banned, but they're also trying to like fire or
Speaker 1: arrest the teachers and school board members for allowing these
Speaker 1: books to happen. There has been school boy members who
Speaker 1: have like stepped down because of just how much harassment
Speaker 1: is about these things. Quote from the Western Chavinist channel,
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ straight up pedophile books in our children's schools.
Speaker 1: Once again, the Jewish school board member gets mad and
Speaker 1: try to shut them down. How can you not connect
Speaker 1: the dots here? There's no political solution. Voting will not
Speaker 1: remove these people. Um. There was the mayor of Houston,
Speaker 1: uh So in the mayor of Houston, Ohio heard about
Speaker 1: this and he went to a school board meeting and
Speaker 1: instructed all of them, all of the board members to
Speaker 1: resign um quoting the quoting the Proud Boy right wing
Speaker 1: organizing channel Western CHAVINIZTA. This comes after some of the
Speaker 1: degenerate parasites in the system called educators, instructed kids to
Speaker 1: describe a sex scene that they wouldn't show their mom.
Speaker 1: Of course this didn't happen. This is this is they
Speaker 1: these these things are not are not. These books are
Speaker 1: not used in any kind of curriculum anyway. So even
Speaker 1: even if they were that that we were not even
Speaker 1: we're not even in that reality. Um. So the mayor
Speaker 1: of this town basically got these instructed these instructed all
Speaker 1: of these people to resign um. Earlier, I think in
Speaker 1: mark No. In August of this year, pride flags were
Speaker 1: banned at a at a school school district inside south
Speaker 1: west Oregon. Um, I think around I think around Newburgh.
Speaker 1: The Newberg school district banned but banned pride flags. So
Speaker 1: all this kind of stuff and and of course that
Speaker 1: is in a lot of states. But the again, the
Speaker 1: fact that it's in like Oregon, a blue state, is
Speaker 1: people got made like you know, there's like you know,
Speaker 1: NBC articles about it. Because it's it's Oregon. It's not
Speaker 1: it's it's it's not it's it's not a red state.
Speaker 1: So it's all big, it's all Portland, it's all Antifa,
Speaker 1: right yeah. Yeah, so again the stuff is not not
Speaker 1: not like contained to one thing. And like yeah, if
Speaker 1: you google the stuff around these books, if you google
Speaker 1: like gender queer book, uh school boards, you'll find this
Speaker 1: in so many school districts. You'll see just mobs of
Speaker 1: people lined up yelling and screaming um and like like
Speaker 1: printing out giant, like giant cardboard prints of of this
Speaker 1: comic book showing like like with like you know, there's
Speaker 1: like a dick on it, Like there's like a drawn
Speaker 1: a drawn dick, because that's what human bodies look like.
Speaker 1: Like you can look at like a lot of like yeah,
Speaker 1: they're like what are you know, banned the statue of
Speaker 1: David because he has this dick out too, like like
Speaker 1: come on. And also these are the same people who
Speaker 1: talk about like oh they're you know, banning books, burning books,
Speaker 1: you know, right, there was that there was that tweet
Speaker 1: from like James Woods about like these are the books
Speaker 1: that people want banned. That means they're the most important ones.
Speaker 1: But these people love. These people love like burning books.
Speaker 1: These people love banning books. They love cancel culture. That
Speaker 1: the cultures that I was that I was in as
Speaker 1: a kid, they would have like massive like book and
Speaker 1: like c D and DVD burnings for like unlike unholy
Speaker 1: and sinful media that you would like bring in and
Speaker 1: like throw like your sinful music onto this giant fire. Like.
Speaker 1: These people love love burning book because they love they
Speaker 1: love banning stuff. They love cancel culture. Um, but they
Speaker 1: just like that. Yeah, So that was that was most
Speaker 1: of my stuff around the kind of the ongoing queer
Speaker 1: and trans stuff. Of course, you know, this ties into
Speaker 1: the bathroom stuff as well, with the people showing up
Speaker 1: to school board meetings to scream about you know, kids
Speaker 1: going ship in the bathroom that they want to and
Speaker 1: feel comfortable in. Um. You know. And again like it
Speaker 1: doesn't it's not gonna stop with trans people either, right
Speaker 1: as soon as they ban trans people, the next thing
Speaker 1: is going to be oh, gay students, right it is
Speaker 1: it never it's never stops, it always keeps going. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's just an ever present problem that it's gonna
Speaker 1: require a lot more, a lot more dealing with and
Speaker 1: again with all of these flash mobs, like no one,
Speaker 1: no one's gonna stop them because they're like the people
Speaker 1: in power, They're the people that have all of the privilege.
Speaker 1: There's no really effective counter organizing for these school board
Speaker 1: meetings right now. Um, the cops aren't gonna do ship.
Speaker 1: Security guards are't gonna do ship. Uh, and regular libs
Speaker 1: and regular regular people are going to do shit either.
Speaker 1: And it's hard to figure out how to actually combat
Speaker 1: this because there's a lot of times that the people
Speaker 1: in school boards were like, no, we don't want this
Speaker 1: to turn into a giant like fistfights, Like don't don't
Speaker 1: come in mass to start fistfighting them. But there needs
Speaker 1: to be something to combat, whether that be you know,
Speaker 1: running running for school boards, just showing up outside school boards,
Speaker 1: having just more people there in, having more presence there
Speaker 1: so that it's not as overwhelmed by like a mob
Speaker 1: of two hundred anti mask people showing up. Right there
Speaker 1: needs to be some type of thing happening because no
Speaker 1: one else needs to be countered and yeah, you know what,
Speaker 1: they might need to get the ship kicked out of them.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but like I don't like I don't think
Speaker 1: that would actually help in this instance, probably, but like
Speaker 1: there needs to be fucking something like they they are.
Speaker 1: The level of boldness that they have is evidence that
Speaker 1: they feel they are confident that there is no counter
Speaker 1: to what there is going to be done. And perhaps
Speaker 1: if they were being met by a wall of people
Speaker 1: in the community who were willing, if they tried to
Speaker 1: force their way into fucking throw down, you know, to say,
Speaker 1: you're not entering this building without a goddamn mask, You're
Speaker 1: not shutting down this meeting. Um, I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: that would do something. I don't actually know what would
Speaker 1: do something. If it was people just as regular people,
Speaker 1: I think that would be. Yeah, it's certainly not going
Speaker 1: to help if it's antifa, Um, for the love of God,
Speaker 1: don't show up in fucking black block at a school
Speaker 1: board meeting. Um, Like what would work is a bunch
Speaker 1: of other middle aged parents showing up and being willing
Speaker 1: to confront these people if and like everything that is
Speaker 1: worth mentioning is that a lot of the people at
Speaker 1: these protests like are not parents at all. Like they're
Speaker 1: not they're not they're not even in the same school district.
Speaker 1: They're just sort of like this this is just how
Speaker 1: this is just how the sort of right wing outrage
Speaker 1: machine has worked, and this is where they're drawing people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean and again like it's it's a lot of
Speaker 1: the people in there, there's gonna be big do dudes
Speaker 1: who want to fight, but a lot of the people
Speaker 1: like screaming are are like you know, middle aged women.
Speaker 1: The people who are like really like leading the charge
Speaker 1: on this because they're able to use their privilege because
Speaker 1: like no one's gonna stop them, right, So that that's
Speaker 1: like when they're leading the charge of two people who
Speaker 1: are gonna like scream and harass and chase out the
Speaker 1: black security guards, chase out, chase out the all of this,
Speaker 1: all the school remembers no one's they're they're very effective
Speaker 1: at using their privilege to gain political ground by just
Speaker 1: like doing stuff on the ground. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like this is like the January six thing. It's
Speaker 1: like the January six thing. This is the new future
Speaker 1: of political action is just showing up in mass two
Speaker 1: places where no one's gonna stop you because you're like
Speaker 1: you're the you know, the good, relatable you know everyday
Speaker 1: Yeah you're anyway, That's that's the stuff I had, will
Speaker 1: probably have an ad break and then talk about maybe
Speaker 1: some of how this stuff started. Speaking of using your privilege,
Speaker 1: you know, what is the greatest privilege being able to
Speaker 1: purchase the products that Yeah, that's exactly right. There's no
Speaker 1: privilege higher than being able to engage with these consumables.
Speaker 1: And we're back, all right, Chris, you want to close
Speaker 1: this out. Yeah, So the last thing I want to
Speaker 1: talk about that is interesting about this whole thing is,
Speaker 1: you know, we we've we've mostly been focusing on the
Speaker 1: very furthest right elements of this, but a lot of
Speaker 1: the school board stuff is tied to I mean just
Speaker 1: straight a Republican party operatives and people who work in
Speaker 1: this sort of you know, I mean there's there's literally
Speaker 1: bunch of people who work for the Republican parties we'll
Speaker 1: get into. And then there's also this sort of network
Speaker 1: of of Republican think tanks, republicans sort of yeah, dark
Speaker 1: money dumps, that's a lot of a lot of AstroTurf
Speaker 1: groups and that kind of stuff. Yeah, And and so
Speaker 1: I want to talk about a few of these people
Speaker 1: because I think they're interesting. Um, I think we can
Speaker 1: start with Nicole Nelly who's an interesting person. She's so
Speaker 1: she she most recently founded Parents Defending Education. Who are they?
Speaker 1: They're one of the big groups to sort of like
Speaker 1: spreads this this sort of attack on school board stuff
Speaker 1: over the country. They have chapters, they organize people, and
Speaker 1: they also, you know, they do this thing where they
Speaker 1: collect incident reports from from school districts that they you know,
Speaker 1: just distribute to all these people and they put it online.
Speaker 1: They have all of these they they they have a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff they do. They do a lot of
Speaker 1: anti mask mandate stuff. So they have these like template letters,
Speaker 1: like template like fakely performing letter things that you can
Speaker 1: send to schools that if you don't want to wear
Speaker 1: a masks. That's the staple of this type of organizing. Now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and the interesting thing about Nicolenelly is that so
Speaker 1: this is not like her first organ like three years
Speaker 1: eighteen back in the Halcyon Days of of I you know,
Speaker 1: I I'm not quit going to say it was before
Speaker 1: the mask fully came off, but it was well the
Speaker 1: mask was like a little bit more on. She she
Speaker 1: previously founded a speech first. Yeah you might remember. Yeah,
Speaker 1: speech was the big talking point. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And so she ran that for a while. Now she's
Speaker 1: you know, organizing with the holy people who just wants
Speaker 1: to Yeah, they just move on, they move on to
Speaker 1: the new things. It was, it was free speech, it
Speaker 1: was christ theory. Right now it's anti mask stuff. Next
Speaker 1: up is gonna be trans stuff going real hard. Just
Speaker 1: today we had the fucking person who BBC platforms, the
Speaker 1: fucking lincum. Yeah, Lily K, the rapist Lily K manifesto
Speaker 1: where she details which specific trans women she wants to
Speaker 1: personally kill. Yeah, I used to know Lily Um. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, uh real dark turned Um, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I guess it's not super surprising. She was definitely interviewed
Speaker 1: her for a documentary and it was a bit off putting. Uh,
Speaker 1: didn't realize this was going on. I mean, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: there's a lot of a lot a lot of reports
Speaker 1: of people in like the sex book industry of talking
Speaker 1: about her, like raping people in bathrooms, which again it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the people it's always screaming about, Oh no trans woman
Speaker 1: or in bathrooms. Yeah, the people. The person screaming about
Speaker 1: this is an actual rapist. Like and like when when
Speaker 1: we say rapist here, like she she she raped so
Speaker 1: many people that, like on Twitter, like I was scrolling
Speaker 1: through my feet and I saw multiple people who were like, oh,
Speaker 1: I know this person she assaulted me. Yeah, it's really bad.
Speaker 1: The people who the turfs are like pushing. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is the BBC was platform. You're so like, yeah, like
Speaker 1: trans stuff is as soon as as soon as the
Speaker 1: anti mask anti vax stuff like dies down in the
Speaker 1: next five months or whatever. Uh, I foresee a massive
Speaker 1: pivot towards specifically anti anti trans antiqueer antique stuff because
Speaker 1: that's gonna be the new thing. Yep. And and and
Speaker 1: I think it's it's worth bearing in mind that this stuff, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know with with the cold NAILI epically. So she
Speaker 1: she worked she like worked at the Cato Institute, which
Speaker 1: is like Murray Rothbart and Charles Cokes. Now it's it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's basic. It's basically this is a slight
Speaker 1: over supplication, but it's basically one of the Cokes sort
Speaker 1: of like money laundering like money operation things. She also
Speaker 1: worked at Freedom Works, who yeah, yeah, this is great.
Speaker 1: So um, this is this is one of the fun
Speaker 1: parts of this, which is that so Freedom Works is
Speaker 1: another one of the Coke's sort of dark money laundering
Speaker 1: machine things and Freedom Works are basically the people who
Speaker 1: created the Tea Party, Like there are people who turned
Speaker 1: the Tea Party from like a bunch of weird guys,
Speaker 1: like like six weirdos into like, you know, the basically
Speaker 1: the the the the entirety of the pre Trumps conservative
Speaker 1: political machine who like built Republican Party after it was
Speaker 1: like completely discredited um in into two thousand's. And this
Speaker 1: is true of a lot of the people who are
Speaker 1: in charge of these big organs have connections like this,
Speaker 1: um the person you found in No Left Turn, which
Speaker 1: is No Off Turn, No One for an education. They're
Speaker 1: they're they're They're not one of these big sort of
Speaker 1: anti school bird things. I mean they they are the people.
Speaker 1: They're one of people who like they have a list
Speaker 1: of books on their website that they want banned. Wow, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's great cool And their founder rights for the heritage
Speaker 1: foundations like magazine, So they're there. There's there's all of
Speaker 1: this stuff. And I think maybe the most implematic one
Speaker 1: is this guy is Mark Ruffo who Rufo. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: so he's he's the guy who just created the whole
Speaker 1: critical race theory thing out of nothing. He like threw
Speaker 1: together a bunch of like in just like these incredibly
Speaker 1: tenuous connections. Like there's a bunch of sort of old
Speaker 1: cultural Marxism conspiracy stuff in there. Yeah, it's a lot
Speaker 1: of like Frankfurt's school type ship. Yeah. Yeah. And and
Speaker 1: but but what I think is interesting about him, it's
Speaker 1: less his ideas, which are just pseudo intellectual. Yeah, he doesn't.
Speaker 1: He's not actually super smart in what he says. That
Speaker 1: there's a lot of videos of him talking to actual
Speaker 1: philosophers getting led about what rice theory is. Like, he's
Speaker 1: actually not that intelligent in this, in this side of things.
Speaker 1: But but you know that the thing is that there's
Speaker 1: nothing more dangerous than an idiot with a trick up
Speaker 1: his sleeve exactly. And you know, and then the trick
Speaker 1: basically is Fox News. And you know, the reason the
Speaker 1: reason this whole thing exists is that this was you know,
Speaker 1: Mark Ruffo, He's very very explicit about this, that this
Speaker 1: this this was his solution to the George Floyd uprising
Speaker 1: was that oh, we we need we need to we
Speaker 1: need to find this thing to stop the medicinum of
Speaker 1: this uprising. And this is this is who Tucker Carlson
Speaker 1: brings on and starts bring on and this blows up,
Speaker 1: and he immediately gets hired by the Manhattan Institute, which
Speaker 1: is a very not that old but they're from the eighties,
Speaker 1: but a very an old, extremely powerful conservative thing tank
Speaker 1: that I don't think. I think it's less known than
Speaker 1: things like the Heritage Foundation or the kid who wants
Speaker 1: to Yeah, I would say so, yeah, but he gets
Speaker 1: they hired him like immediately because you know, the sort
Speaker 1: of mainline of the Republican Party very quickly is like
Speaker 1: this is the thing that we can use as like
Speaker 1: a hammer, right, And so the mentatt the Institute publishes
Speaker 1: this group of work for them. Now I can't I'm
Speaker 1: not actually sure if you I don't know if you
Speaker 1: specifically wrote this or he was just involved in it.
Speaker 1: I think it's it's the bye line is just the
Speaker 1: Manhattan Institute. But they have this incredibly detailed tool kit
Speaker 1: explaining how you know, both both explaining what the sort
Speaker 1: of right wing like line on critical race theory is.
Speaker 1: They have like a bunch of explainers, have like list
Speaker 1: of terms. Have you ever seen Yeah, yeah, it's actually yeah,
Speaker 1: if you've ever seen like list of terms of people
Speaker 1: want banded, Like it's all just pulled from this document, right,
Speaker 1: so this add stuff. Um no, But but the interting
Speaker 1: part of about this is the other thing is this
Speaker 1: this is an organizing manual, right, It's it's as specific
Speaker 1: thing that tells you how to go and how to
Speaker 1: find other people, like other other people. You know, if
Speaker 1: if you're like an incensed right wing like freaking one
Speaker 1: of these school districts, it's like, okay, well here's here's
Speaker 1: how you like talk to other people in your districts.
Speaker 1: Here's here's a list of options of like things you
Speaker 1: can do going public. And then there's a very interesting
Speaker 1: thing part of this that that I think is really
Speaker 1: disturbing and outlines like really what's going on here, which
Speaker 1: is there's this whole like freak out thing about this
Speaker 1: thing called minority rule, where like, oh, the left has
Speaker 1: this like they have this like militant minority that that
Speaker 1: will compel the majority to follow them by because they
Speaker 1: keep on showing up and they keep on doing things.
Speaker 1: And if they if this minority like it keeps keep
Speaker 1: keeps you know, being more in transient than everyone else,
Speaker 1: then they will inevitably win. And this the three quarters
Speaker 1: of this section is this like weird fearmongering thing about it.
Speaker 1: But then the last part of it is a bunch
Speaker 1: is the thing that's saying, oh, we need to do
Speaker 1: this ourselves, right, this is how we win. We win
Speaker 1: by being more in transient. We will by showing up
Speaker 1: more often of course. Yeah, and you know, and this
Speaker 1: is this is the other thing is this is from
Speaker 1: like last year. I think this is like this summer.
Speaker 1: So yeah, okay, that's sorry. This is this is this
Speaker 1: is really this year. But it's interesting because it's like
Speaker 1: this is the sort of you know, this, this is
Speaker 1: this is the Republican Party essentially, I mean, the institutes
Speaker 1: very very main stre Republican Party. This yeah, this is
Speaker 1: this is how they do effective in person organizing. We we
Speaker 1: we talked about this a bit in our episodes um
Speaker 1: about the like in the aftermath of the abortion ruling
Speaker 1: in Texas and how and how like the religious right
Speaker 1: ring organizing has worked in local districts. Yeah. This this
Speaker 1: is how they're able to get things done, which is
Speaker 1: why there's been so many school by members who either
Speaker 1: got fired, who have had to step down, who have
Speaker 1: been harassed off the job and are now there's people
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of a lot of like people
Speaker 1: I would describe as people holding very extreme views are
Speaker 1: now running and taking these spots. Um because if you
Speaker 1: can do if you can do this type of like
Speaker 1: again it's not grassroots, but it's it's it is it
Speaker 1: is like asturp so like it appears grassroots. But if
Speaker 1: you can do this type of like faux grassroots organizing,
Speaker 1: you can gain a lot of power over specific areas
Speaker 1: and make a lot of people's lives a lot more miserable.
Speaker 1: And that's that's that's what the goal is, right, The
Speaker 1: goal is to make the trans kids lives miserable. The
Speaker 1: goals they get people to not wear masks and dive
Speaker 1: COVID like that, those are the results of these actions. Well,
Speaker 1: I think I think they're they're They're an interesting interplay
Speaker 1: here though, because I think because so freedom works, like
Speaker 1: like even even a lot of the specific protests that
Speaker 1: are happening, and this is especially true of the very earlier,
Speaker 1: earliest ones. I thinks like when when like the very
Speaker 1: first school board protests that were happening, Yeah, like like
Speaker 1: a lot of these sumiler to follow is when they
Speaker 1: started start up. Yeah, and and those a lot of
Speaker 1: those were directly organized by by people who work for
Speaker 1: Freedom Works. And and this is this is what a
Speaker 1: lot of the RT ones yeah yeah, yeah, they see
Speaker 1: the crt ones or for every specifically freedom works. And
Speaker 1: this is what I think is interesting about this is
Speaker 1: that you know, okay, freedom Works. It's like, okay, so
Speaker 1: what does Freedom Works out of this? Freedom Works wants
Speaker 1: the T party again, right because you know that this
Speaker 1: is this is what Freedom Works does. Right there. They're
Speaker 1: they're they're basically the group that comes in when when
Speaker 1: the Republicans start losing election cycles, they're like, okay, well
Speaker 1: now we need to get the bounce of power back.
Speaker 1: We need to bring drawn the Democrats own. So they're
Speaker 1: they're they're largely trying to build a sort of electoral base.
Speaker 1: And and again like this, this this will look familiar
Speaker 1: to people who remember two thousand and ten because it's
Speaker 1: the same thing except and this is the thing that
Speaker 1: I I I this is the part where I genuinely
Speaker 1: they can't tell whether the Freedom Works people, whether the cokes,
Speaker 1: whether that whether this sort of dark wening network either
Speaker 1: I don't I can't tell whether they understand what they're
Speaker 1: doing and like it or they're just incredibly naive. But
Speaker 1: you know, this is not two thousand ten, right. You
Speaker 1: can't when when you start mobilizing people, like mobilizing people
Speaker 1: on the right wing to go to a place, they
Speaker 1: don't just like sit there and hold signs anymore. You
Speaker 1: cannot You cannot contain them at this point. You cannot
Speaker 1: control the spread like you have once you've you've opened
Speaker 1: this can, and there's no way of putting them back
Speaker 1: in because as soon as they start organizing on appside telegram,
Speaker 1: they're one step away from skull masks. And then they're
Speaker 1: being okay with cheering around people that are going to
Speaker 1: go beat up that are going to go beat up
Speaker 1: people in these meetings. Yeah, and this is this is
Speaker 1: this is really the thing that I think it's it's
Speaker 1: not just January six that we live in the shadow
Speaker 1: January six, but it's also about you know, if you
Speaker 1: look at how how the anti lockdown protest went, right,
Speaker 1: you a bunch of people showing up with guns, the
Speaker 1: capitals and that stuff was extremely effective. And that in
Speaker 1: the combination between that in January six has you know,
Speaker 1: it's open the floodgates and now that was that was
Speaker 1: six being possible. Is the more and more protests around
Speaker 1: capitals of people showing up in mass to overwhelm anyone,
Speaker 1: and because they're all white and because they're all like
Speaker 1: middle class conservatives, no one's gonna stop them. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and you know, and this is the thing, right, you know,
Speaker 1: the Cokes. I I genuinely don't know what the Cokes
Speaker 1: want out of this. My guess is that the thing
Speaker 1: that they want is a new based Republican voters. But
Speaker 1: that's not what they're creating. The thing that they're creating
Speaker 1: is a new core fascist street fighters. And you know it,
Speaker 1: at some point, it doesn't it literally doesn't matter whether
Speaker 1: or not this is what the Cokes are trying to
Speaker 1: do or like not trying to do, because they're in
Speaker 1: the end it's it's just pushing people towards thinking there's
Speaker 1: no political solution. It's still only only violence and overwhelming
Speaker 1: people in mass is the only way to get the
Speaker 1: change that they want. The change they want is to
Speaker 1: have trans kids not exists. And yeah, just more more
Speaker 1: and more like fecistic policies, um, whether that be you know,
Speaker 1: banning books that mentioned gay people existing or what it's
Speaker 1: like to be a gay person, whether that be teaching
Speaker 1: people that racism is still an actual thing that exists,
Speaker 1: or that be putting a masculine so you don't kill
Speaker 1: your grandma or whatever. Yep. Well, and you know, and
Speaker 1: I think I think one last thing, right, you know,
Speaker 1: we saw what happened last time they were in power, right,
Speaker 1: and it was you know, and like you can you
Speaker 1: can talk about how a lot of the worst stuff
Speaker 1: is still happening. Was like, yeah, they put a bunch
Speaker 1: of people in concentration camps, right, and if they if
Speaker 1: they take back power again, and there's a good chance
Speaker 1: that they're going to because you know, the Democrats are
Speaker 1: being they they you know, the Democrats never want to
Speaker 1: be in power. The thing they want to be minority oppositions.
Speaker 1: They can do fundraising, right and if you know, when
Speaker 1: when when these people, if these people take power again,
Speaker 1: it's going to be even worse than it was last time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The thing looking at looking at the Virginia election, the
Speaker 1: night of recording is a great example of that. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: in terms of yeah, it turns out when democrats just
Speaker 1: do nothing and just sit around in office, you don't
Speaker 1: convince young people to want to vote for them because
Speaker 1: they're not actually doing anything, so then they just sit out.
Speaker 1: Then the Republicans actually do vote in people. Then we
Speaker 1: get uh we anti c R T person elected to
Speaker 1: be the governor of Virginia. And that's the episode. Good Times. Well,
Speaker 1: I hope everybody's optimistic feeling nice. Well, um, we'll be
Speaker 1: back with something else. Research your school boards, who is
Speaker 1: in it, and just protests around it and maybe show
Speaker 1: up with some of your I don't know buddies with
Speaker 1: your lattes and stand in front of the building and
Speaker 1: be like, no, we don't want you, we don't want
Speaker 1: you to shut stuff down because no one else is
Speaker 1: going to stop them. It has to be just like
Speaker 1: regular people. You can't going to be the oposite. It's
Speaker 1: not going to be any elected democrat and honestly, like,
Speaker 1: you can't rely on teens and black block to do
Speaker 1: this that this isn't this isn't what they need to
Speaker 1: be doing. It should be like yeah, it'd be like
Speaker 1: millennials and Gen X need to be like, hey, no,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna we're not gonna have you doing this. Well,
Speaker 1: that's the that's the episode. That's the episode It Could
Speaker 1: Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media. For
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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.